marcan
Trick Member
Joined: 28 Jul 2005
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40.  Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| cranium wrote: | | I don't understand why no-one has designed a dance pad using load cells as the sensors. They are EXTREMELY accurate and durable. |
Actually, I have, sort of. I'm planning on building a homemade DDR pad, replacing the usual sheet metal switches with a load cell. I've got all the code working for the microcontroller, and you can adjust sensitivity and such. My reasons for doing this are basically what you said: durability, lack of (noticeably) moving parts, and sensitivity adjustment.
I've got 4 load cells from an old broken bathroom scale that seem to be appropriate. They look like this. I've tried them using simple opamps and they sorta work fine (seems good enough for simple on/off). Nonetheless, seeing that you've worked with them, what do you recommend for getting a semi-decent pressure sensitive analog output from them? Sensitivity is not an issue, and they can be software-calibrated, but I'd like to have a decent range for adjusting, and as little noise as possible (With my experiments with opamps things like my WiFi router would mess around with it pretty noticeably). Any appropriate (and not overly expensive) IC that I could use? Or maybe something made out of opamps or discrete electronics? (I guess I could just go with the opamps, use twisted pair wire and some filtering caps, and some software conditioning)
WRT the optical pads, nice idea, although I see trouble with the recessing (and the proposed solutions), and the fact that you have to lift off your foot considerably (personally, many times I don't lift my foot off the pad to press it multiple times; I just vary how much pressure I apply, which would be problematic with this pad) |
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